• WARNING: Tube/Valve amplifiers use potentially LETHAL HIGH VOLTAGES.
    Building, troubleshooting and testing of these amplifiers should only be
    performed by someone who is thoroughly familiar with
    the safety precautions around high voltages.

6AS7 OTL headphone amplifier

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if you want lower gain, just use small mu tube

There are very few tubes that actually fit those parameters. Sure, there are triodes with lower gain, but most of them need a heap of plate current and pretty high bias voltage. When you consider the operating current required, then you might end up losing your ability to directly couple, and the design falls apart a bit.
 
..now i see.
it´s sad that coupling cap phobia is strong again. :(

If you're going to run a lot plate current on the output tube, making a self biasing cathode follower will end up being a bit of a pain in the butt. (More wirewound resistors)

You could bias it up more like a transistor, with a voltage divider from B+ to ground, but then you're injecting power supply noise into the grid.

Sometimes direct coupling is a sensible approach not motivated by phobias or religious preferences.
 
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Thanks guys, question still without answer: It's possible to mod for cathode LED bias or cathode battery bias to improve the SQ?

New question: It's possible to improve the SQ changing the cathode resistor of 6AS7 for something like this schematic?

663757d1519138081-led-choice-cathode-biasing-immagine-jpg
 
The resistor divider formed by r3/r31 only passes 60 percent of the signal at the 6SN7's plate to the grid of the 6AS7. Installing a capacitor across r3 will pass the signal through without attenuating the AC component in the divider, while maintaining the existing DC voltage.

Quick and dirty math, so it isn't terribly exact, but close enough for this application (the tubes will vary more than the errors of my quick maths most likely)

Bypassed cathode resistor you will get a gain of maybe ~16 at these operating points (resistively loaded in the earlier schematic) so looks like: 16 x 0.6= 9.6. Unbypassed cathode resistor, but with r3 shunt capacitor will give you maybe a gain of 10, and slightly better linearity due to the internal feedback afforded us via cathode degeneration. Negligible difference, and in real world it might make a couple degrees difference in volume knob rotation, if it's even audible.

(if PRR wants to step in and do the math better I'm all ears)

Like I said, a wash. Given the choice, I'll take a smaller film cap when I can, as they tend to be a bit less likely to cost much for the size, and are generally less "obtrusive" to the sound and measurements. Likely to sound better too.
 
If you put the battery in series with the grid it wouldn't need the input cap. The battery won't discharge through the resistor when it's off, either. Picture from tubecad.com
Use a carbon cell, it has a long service life in this usage and doesn't mind heat as much as an alkaline.

Battery%20Grid%20Bias%20Line-Stage%20Amplifier%20with%20No%20Input%20Coupling%20Capacitor.png
 
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